Saturday, November 11, 2017

This started out as an outline for videos to use in a 7-hour class/workshop on this topic I am co-teaching with Andrew Smith; it has turned into enough for a semester-long class and/or a big book.Bear in mind, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list... many of my own favorites are missing... but rather a representative one, which builds a narrative of the evolution of these topics in American music. There is some annotation for clarity, but each of the many headings and subheadings is ripe for a lecture and discussion.So here goes...RACE, CLASS, REGION AND CULTURE IN AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC

What follows is an examination of the ways region, race and class have influenced American music from the colonial period to the present, with most of the material coming from the 20th century. It is not a history of American music per sé; it is primarily centered on the South (from which most genres of American popular music originate), the West, and Oklahoma (which is in some ways the crossroads of both).

Music (rivaled only by food) was the least segregated thing in the South. Musical forms were fluid, and musicians were versatile- black musicians in the early 20th century often included country and western songs in their repertoire, and white musicians were frequently conversant in blues styles. White and black performers from that era like Jimmie Rodgers and Leadbelly often played songs that were a mixture of blues and country. Later in the century, rock and roll could accurately be described as a blend of blues and country; later still, outlaw country and southern rock could be described as blends of blues, country, and rock and roll.

Some of these songs address race directly, and others directly address issues of class and the lived experience of the working poor. Indirectly, one or both of those themes are beneath the surface in all of them.

Things to look for: The British influence on American music, via traditional English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ballads, includes an emphasis on lyrics and especially on storytelling, and that approach is woven through the various iterations of “country/western” music. The African influence includes call-and-response, and in becoming African American comes to include themes of resistance.

Working class songs, and this can be seen from British ballads forward, are often fatalistic and involve imprisonment or other forms of oppression from authority. All the aforementioned forms often take a religious expression, looking to a higher power for sustenance and justice.

oThe above song's lyrics are about a former (perhaps runaway) slave longing for the better life he had on the plantation. Note: Foster spent most of his life in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and visited the South only once when he honeymooned in New Orleans.

oCompare to: “Old Man River” by Paul Robeson [from 1936 musical Showboat, a nostalgic call-back to Mississippi Riverboat Days of the 1800s… but note the slightly different tone. "I gets weary and sick of tryin'. I'm tired of livin', and scared of dyin'."]

ofield hollers mixed with ballads, performed by rural musicians, using African rhythms and structure, playing “blue” notes and often thumping on their guitars for percussion. Not recorded until the late 1920s, but the style had been around a long time. Also used bottleneck slides.

oScatting, or making up nonsensical lyrics, had been part of ragtime and jazz since the turn of the century before, but it was introduced to the general public in a 1926 record by Louis Armstrong, “Heebie Jeebies.” His lyric sheet fell in the middle of the song and he started scatting.

oSome early blues singers could be as raunchy as any modern rapper, and –like rappers –often had both a “real version” of songs that they played live in clubs and a “radio edit version” that was cleaned up. Many of those “dirty blues” songs were recorded, though, in the 1920s and 1930s.

§A white country/Western swing singer from Pennsylvania, in 1951 he and his band The Saddlemen did a country cover of the popular “Rocket 88”, then of the blues song “Rock the Joint.” In 1954 they changed their name to Bill Haley and the Comets and introduced their version of “race music” to white teens.

§Promoted by Cleveland DJ Alan Freed, who for several years had been playing rhythm and blues “race music” for his white teen audience, and popularized the term “rock and roll” [which had been around for decades, and was African American slang for sex]

oEngineered in part by Chet Atkins, a move toward smooth, jazz-like sounds, turning away from steel guitars and honky tonks. Goal: Capture the older audience, as the kids were all turning to rock and roll.

About Me

Troy D. Smith was born in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee in 1968. He has waxed floors, moved furniture, been a lay preacher, and taught high school and college. He writes in a variety of genres, achieving his earliest successes with westerns -his first published short story appeared in 1995 in Louis L'Amour Western Magazine, and he won the Spur Award in 2001 for the novel Bound for the Promise-Land (being a finalist on two other occasions.) He received his PhD in history from the University of Illinois, and is currently teaching history at Tennessee Tech.